If online casual gaming has taught me anything in the past two years, it is that we are all creatures of habit. While actually going to work to create real monetary gain seems rather absurd, collecting property in Mafia Wars and growing crops in Farmville seem very acceptable. While on Facebook, these games work as pretty good distractions from productive life… giving you something to come back to and build upon. On the iPhone, these apps are an entirely different animal. Since the device is always mobile, they suck you in mercilessly and grab hold until you say uncle.

Zombie Farm is a casual game that takes some of the farming elements from Farmville and blends them with everyones favorite app genre, zombies. You start the app as a mild mannered looking individual that owns a farm that grows normal farm crops as well as zombies… a bit odd, but acceptable. The game really revolves around your persistence, because all you have to do is sit there and build up a farm Sim City style on square plots that cover a map. Instead of the usual game skill requirements such as speed and intelligence, you must rely on your willingness to pick up the app time and time again due to the fact that everything grows in real time. If a plant or a zombie says that it takes a day to grow, you actually have to wait the full 24 hours. The only way to speed things up, for those of you who want to play more than 10 minute bursts every 4 hours or so, is to earn brains (which are very hard to come by) or buy brains through in app purchasing.

With your farm, you can grow all sorts of crops to earn money, but the real fun comes with growing zombies to attack your neighbors. There is really no point to the game, as in there is no end game that I have gotten to as of yet, but that doesn't mean that there is no fun to be had. As you level up throughout the game, you get more and more things to build and grow, including trees that add "life force" and upgrades that give your zombies stat boosts as well as a fun makeover. With your freshly grown zombie militia, you can attack neighboring locations, earning you gold and an occasional brain to make your farm better.

The real issue with the game is in the fact that there is not much to do, and after awhile there is really no point to doing any of it. Unless you are willing to throw down some serious bucks to speed the game along via in app purchases, Zombie Farm really only provides about an hour of fun a day, and that is if you are super diligent and are willing to stop and start the app about 10 times a day when your plants are done growing or you have an attack ready. There are no global leaderboards to conquer and no way to do battles with your friends online, there is only you and your farm that fills up far too fast.

Given that the app is primarily free (unless you start buying things in the app), it is hard to knock it too much for not providing a bunch of entertainment. I really wish that the Zombie Farm provided some kind of fun past the short invasion sequences that, while admittedly a bit funny, become stale due to the absolute bare minimum amount of skill required to win. If there were more things to invade, or more interactive things to accomplish within the farm I would certainly play a bit more, but as is, I just can't see myself putting any more than a few minutes into this app. If variety is the spice of life, Zombie Farm is rather bland.

iPhone Screenshots

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iPad Screenshots

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